Teacher efficacy and elementary teacher education.

Abstract

Elementary teacher education in Taiwan has been facing the dilemma of cultivating prospective teachers to be generalists or specialists for certain subject areas since 1997. Referring to the significant factors affecting teacher education, "teacher efficacy" is at the heart of this dilemma. This study aimed to compare prospective teachers' efficacy toward mathematics and science of ten preparation programs. Findings indicated that more subject-matter preparations resulted in superior efficacy. It further provided a deliberation on how to prepare elementary teachers.

Introduction

A large and growing body of research data indicate that the preparation and ongoing professional development of teachers in mathematics and science for grades K-12 needs rethinking and improvement on a large scale (e.g., Holmes Group, 1995; Hwang, 2003; National Research Council [NRC], 2001; National Science Foundation, 1996; Rodriguez, 1998; Sanders & Rivers, 1996; Wright et al., 1997; Wu, 2004). While re-examining the effectiveness of the design of teacher preparation programs, it indicates that the traditional design of teacher preparation programs are oriented to cultivate elementary generalists (NRC, 2001). Furthermore, for instance, "too often, teacher preparation programs are characterized by a lack of coherence and articulation across the general education, science education, and professional education curriculum strands" (NRC, 1997, p. 9). Even though most programs currently require prospective elementary school teachers to have a major in a discipline other than education, few of them choose majors in mathematics or science. Within this trend of program designing, prospective teachers received inadequate preparation in certain subject areas, for instance, mathematics and science (education). It led to the insufficiency of in-depth content knowledge and conceptual understanding of and efficacy toward mathematics and science needed for teaching these subjects effectively at all grades.

With regard to Taiwan, the design of all teacher preparation programs encountered significant changes beginning in 1997. Perspective teachers who entered the teachers college were categorized into different departments (programs), such as Departments of Mathematics Education for students' major in mathematics education. Usually, there were eleven departments in one teachers college [1], including the Departments of Mathematics Education (DME), Science Education (DSE), Elementary Education (DEE), Language Education (DLE), Art Education (DAE), Social Science Education (DSS), Music Education (DMU), Early Childhood Education (DEC), Special Education (DSP), Physical Education (DPE), and Department of Children's English Education (DCE). The purpose of separating the whole teacher preparation system by subject matter was to train all prospective teachers to be not only generalists but also specialists in certain subject areas. Following this movement, the teacher preparation programs were modified by having more detailed separation of functions enabling all new teachers to master the subject matter they would teach in the classroom. In addition, there were several new departments established, e.g. the DSP and the DCE, as well as many graduate schools of education in various subject areas or for diverse purposes. All of these efforts in restructuring the teacher preparation programs were to ensure that there would be well-qualified teachers who had different specialties in every elementary school. This idea confirmed the previous recommendation (Romberg, 1994) from participants at a 1993 conference sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, the NCTM, and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

However, there are ongoing innovative projects of the teacher education system in Taiwan, e.g. named as "New Regulations of Teacher Education" (Ministry of Education [MOE], Taiwan, 1999), "The Incorporation of Public Universities and Colleges" (MOE, Taiwan, 2002), and "2004 Education in Republic of China" (MOE, Taiwan, 2004). In this movement, teachers colleges are promoted alone or incorporated with other public colleges to become universities of education or comprehensive universities. The teacher preparation program design within these universities is changed again in order to align to the worldwide trend of reconstructing the higher education system, such as reforms in Australia, Netherlands, England, Germany, Japan, the United States, and so forth (MOE, Taiwan, 2002). Programs are oriented to train generalists because of the two major strategies of "merging" and "reorienting". In "merging", the Department of Education (DE) and the DEC are the main programs for training elementary prospective teachers. As mentioned above, this kind of program design will result in inadequate preparations for some major subject areas, e.g. mathematics and science, at the elementary level. In "reorienting", the DME is renamed as the Department of Applied Mathematics, which emphasizes applied mathematics and not mathematics education. Nevertheless, there will be more mathematicians prepared by this program rather than qualified mathematics teachers at the elementary level, which is still the key issue in this current maelstrom of the education debate.

Accordingly, which kind of design is better for preparing elementary prospective teachers, especially for certain subject areas: one program for the generalists or several separated programs for teachers with variety of majors? It will be definitely a dilemma within this teacher education reform movement in both Taiwan and countries worldwide. How to discover the appropriate practice for designing programs of training elementary teachers will be also the core in this educational action plan. With regard to factors affecting the teacher preparation, the concept of a teacher's sense of efficacy has gained much attention in recent years (Pajares, 1992). "Beginning with research in the 1970s (e.g., Armor et al., 1976; Berman et al., 1977), teacher efficacy was first conceptualized as teachers' general capacity to influence student performance" (Allinder, 1995, p.247). A statement in Ashton's (1984) study addressed the significance of "teacher's sense of efficacy" to teacher education:

   A powerful paradigm for teacher education can be developed on the
   basis of the construct of teacher efficacy. Ashton asserts that no
   other teacher characteristic has demonstrated such a consistent
   relationship to student achievement. A teacher education program
   that has as its aim the development of teacher efficacy, and which
   includes the essential components of a motivation change program,
   should develop teachers who possess the motivation essential for
   effective classroom performance (p.28).

Benz et al. (1992) further recommended, "Helping pre-service teachers to construct beliefs that most positively effect their decision-making in the classroom is an important effort in teacher education reform" (p. 284). Accordingly, a comparative examination of teacher efficacy as the factor of the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs may help to clarify elements for improving teacher quality as well as remodeling teacher preparation programs.

Procedures and Measures

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of elementary teacher preparation program designs by examining perspective teachers' efficacy toward mathematics and science among targeted students. Further, the relationship in the sense of efficacy toward mathematics and science among all participants was also explored. Altogether, there were ten different programs within the participating college, a national teachers college located at the central part of Taiwan, with a total of 340 participants. A quasi-experimental research design with pre- and post-tests was applied in this study. Two standardized instruments, i.e. Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instruments for pre-service teachers (MTEBI, Enochs, Smith, & Huinker, 2000) and Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instruments for pre-service teachers (STEB1, Enochs & Riggs, 1990), and a Participant Main Survey were applied to ascertain the outcomes of pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy toward mathematics and science and compared the differences among these ten different programs. These three instruments were first administered to these 340 freshmen (the first year of entering the programs) as a pre-test. Then, these instruments were administered again to the same students (as seniors at the forth year) as a post-test. Data was collected, entered, and reorganized immediately after receipt. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses (i.e. ANCOVA) were applied in this study associated with a detailed documentation analysis of the curriculum structure and course works.

Finding and Discussion

Both of pre-service teachers' sense of efficacy toward mathematics and science found in this study were significantly different among these ten programs. According to the findings of the study, students in the DME had a superior rating in the cognitive dimension of Personal Mathematics Teaching Efficacy (PMTE), while students in the DSE scored higher in Personal Science Teaching Efficacy (PSTE). After receiving four-years of training, both groups of students (i.e. the DME and the DSE) had more confidence in their own teaching abilities than other students who did not specialize in either mathematics or science (i.e. the remaining eight programs [2]), shown as table 1. However, considering the highest mean scores of PMTE and PSTE, the DME and the DSE students only had approximately 74 percent of confidence in their own teaching abilities. This information provides another warning for all teacher preparation programs: If these pre-service teachers believed they were not ready to assume the teaching responsibility, i.e. they have low confidence in their future teaching ability, teaching quality is potentially jeopardized. Therefore, how to increase the confidence level of these prospective teachers for future teaching is an additional issue and task for teacher preparation programs. See http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/fal2006.htm

Another finding showed that students in the DME had a significantly superior rating in the cognitive dimension of Mathematics Teaching Outcome Expectancy (MTOE), while students in the DSE scored higher in Science Teaching Outcome Expectancy (STOE) but no significance, shown as table 2. Data indicated that all students (prospective teachers) had a range from 60 to 80 percent belief that students' learning can be influenced by effective teaching. However, as indicated above, they did not have adequate confidence in providing efficient teaching in the classroom. Thus, even though they believed effective teaching was essential for students' learning and achievement, the quality of teaching and learning could still not be guaranteed. As Gibson and Dembo (1984) stated, teachers with high efficacy should "persist longer, provide a greater academic focus in the classroom, and exhibit different types of feedback than teachers' who have lower expectations concerning their ability to influence student learning" (p.570). Teacher preparation programs need to discover ways to improve the ratings of both personal teaching efficacy and teaching outcome expectancy of their pre-service teachers in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning in all elementary classrooms. See issue website http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/thl2006.htm

Correlations coefficients were computed among the three scores of each category, i.e. Mathematics Total Score, Science Total Score, PMTE, MTOE, PSTE, and STOE in the post-test. Significant correlation was found between teachers' sense of efficacy toward mathematics and science (i.e. total score). Data also indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between PMTE and PSTE, MTOE and STOE, PMTE and MTOE, and PSTE and STOE. This valuable information provides teacher preparation programs with sufficient reason to devote attention to establishing their prospective teachers' confidence by increasing the connections between the preparations of mathematics and science. Additionally, they may also endeavor to make more efforts on assisting these pre-service teachers to build up both their personal teaching efficacy and teaching outcome expectancy simultaneously.

A detailed document review was conducted to compare the differences of the curriculum structure and course works among these ten programs before and during the formal study. Since the main purpose of this study was to examine perspective teachers' efficacy toward mathematics and science, the DME and the DSE programs were reported separately to show the desired model of program design. Also because of the similarity of the remaining eight programs, their curriculum structures were reported together, while only the DEE program was explained as an example of not specializing in either mathematics or science. With regard to the number of general content knowledge courses and methods courses taken in mathematics and science, students in the DME and the DSE received more preparations in content knowledge and teaching methodology for a total of 77 or more required credits for both programs, shown as table 3. Students in the other 8 programs (departments) took only 22 or more credits and 25 required credits respectively in the disciplines of mathematics and science. See issue website http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/fal2006.htm

The traditional design of teacher preparation programs, which are oriented in cultivating elementary generalists (NRC, 2001), will be inadequate for accomplishing the requirement of having qualified teachers in every classroom and for every subject area. As students have diverse needs and distinct characteristics, it is truly essential that specialized teachers exist for every subject area in every school. In order to reach the goal of enhancing prospective teachers' sense of efficacy toward mathematics and science, including both personal teaching efficacy and teaching outcome expectancy, teacher preparation programs and their faculty members should rethink the program design, the curriculum structure, the content provided, and the pedagogy used in preparing them to teach mathematics and science. Further, even though more preparations in these two subject areas are no guarantee of higher quality of pre-service teachers and their better understandings of their subjects, insufficient preparation will definitely result in inadequacy of content and pedagogical knowledge and teaching skills in mathematics and science. This inadequacy will surely have a great influence on the quality of future teachers and the performance of their students (Chang, Wu, & Gentry, 2005).

Conclusion

Currently, Taiwan's elementary teacher education is trying to pursue a system that is to cultivate generalists. However, the findings of this study showed that the subject-matter oriented program design, i.e. the design of the DME and the DSE, did provide more preparations in mathematics and science education. Prospective teachers in these two programs also gained superior efficacy in delivering effective teaching in the classroom. Consequently, in order to improve the quality of elementary mathematics and science teachers, it is essential to rethink carefully about the future trend and need of the teacher education movement.

Acknowledgement

One part of this research was underwritten by the National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan, numbered as "NSC 93-2511-S-451-001". The perspective raised in this study does not necessarily reflect the position of the NSC. The research team is thankful to all participants. Further, an ongoing research project will provide in-depth information qualitatively of how to improve teacher efficacy in the future.

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Endnotes

[1] Number of programs (departments) varied in every teacher college. There were 9 teachers colleges totally in Taiwan in the year of 1997.

[2] Remaining 8 programs from the DEE, DLE, DAE, DSS, DMU, DEC, DSP, and DPE in the participating teachers college.

Yu-Liang (Aldy) Chang, MingDao University, Taiwan

Su-Chiao (Angel) Wu, National Chiayi University, Taiwan

Aldy Chang, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor, Institute of Teaching Art, MingDao University, Changhua, Taiwan; Angel Wu, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor, Department of Early Childhood Education, National Chiayi University, Chiayi, Taiwan